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The product of a self-absorbed and indulgent world |
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Tuesday, 18 September 2007 |
Like Simon Parker , I often visited Newlyn Art Gallery in my formative
years.
Forty years later, in the 1990s, as the gallery's deputy
chairman, I oversaw a considerable refurbishment, though by no means on
the same scale of the work recently completed on the two buildings now
embraced by the gallery.Also like Simon Parker I wholeheartedly commend
the outstanding, newly-opened buildings. Like him, too, I am appalled
at the insult to local people and artists of the launch exhibitions.
People
ask why. An important part of the explanation is that they are the
products of an indulgent, self-absorbed world. It includes the Tate
Galleries, many art schools and the Arts Council and its many funding
dependents, including Newlyn.
Taxpayers fund them all. In every way they should serve the public. In many ways, as these exhibitions typify, they do not.
Instead
of constantly striving to find and promote the best in contemporary
fine art, they seem more interested in the obscure by-ways of the sad
art of social engineering and the exhausted field of conceptualism.
We
who worked on the earlier refurbishment did so in the hope that we
would be providing a newly-invigorated platform to help sustain the
spirit that in leaner, more rigorous times produced the unsubsidised
great art of earlier Newlyn and later St Ives. But even 12 years ago
the Arts Council was a malign influence. It was unrestrained by the
government that provided its tax funding. Pushed to explain the
government's policy on the visual arts, Sebastian Coe, then an MP, said
frankly to me: "There isn't one."
The vacuum was exploited by
the institutional bureaucrats. Well funded, never called to account,
like Trotskyites working on the inside, they advanced their programme.
The
opening of refurbished Newlyn was hijacked for an upcountry Arts
Council protege whose work symbolised their new state order. As with
Newlyn today, the snub to local opinion and local artists was made
knowingly. Since then the new order has spread deeper and wider, and
moved further and further from what is broadly understood to be fine
art. Time for tax payers to say enough is enough?
Graham Dark
Falmouth
I
HAVE visited both galleries, seen the shows, and concur with your
observations. And who knows, perhaps one of the paintings you saw all
those years ago in the Newlyn Art Gallery was mine.
The issue
you raise concerning the "deliberately elitist and alienating" Newlyn
Art Gallery, are also closely connected with the current administration
of the Newlyn Society of Artists. In the past, painter members of the
society exhibited at the purpose-designed Newlyn Gallery and were
judged by others.
Today, the director of Newlyn Gallery oversees
the balance of the exhibitions and its shows are therefore, ultimately,
in line with Arts Council priorities. The selection of work
intentionally favours the "idea" over the "beauty" that you clearly
value in painting.
Strangely, the word "beauty" is a "no-no"
today; only scientists can talk of the beauty of their experiments, and
not thereby have their perceptions thought dated. Painters here do not
have the privilege of being judged by their peers. If on the cricket
field I furiously shout "hand ball" at a catch, you might think me a
joker or that I have entirely false ideas about the nature of the game
of cricket.
Now, there are two entirely different kinds of
visual art. It is ridiculous to judge the significance of one by the
workings or the other. They are by no means synonymous. So called
conceptual art is ultimately essentially verbal and painting is
ultimately essentially visual. The implications of this are
significant. The former has the kudos today, but the water is muddied
by the false conceptualist claim that both are equally visual art.
The
first home of painting in Cornwall (Newlyn Gallery), was relatively
recently umbrellaed by the Arts Council. Since that time painters have
been increasingly excluded in favour of conceptual artists, not by
malice, but because their work does not fit the council's mould. All
this means for me as a Cornishman, is that my exclusive relationship
with a London gallery excludes my selling elsewhere and therefore
showing for sale in Cornwall. No doubt there are many other artists in
a similar position of having no other venue in Cornwall to show their
work, and I would argue that Cornwall is no better off for that.
David Andrew
Mousehole
HAVING
read Simon Parker's article (A scalpel and a false leg - or cutting
edge art?) I decided to stroll down to Newlyn to see the Newlyn Art
Gallery for myself.
I found it a dispiriting experience. I, the viewing public, was outnumbered two to one by the staff.
Christine
Borland has done a good job with her artificial legs, but I feel that
the right place to exhibit them would be in a teaching hospital, rather
than in an art gallery.
We are very fortunate in having
inherited a rich treasury of the arts, but it is desperately important
that each new generation make its own contribution further to enrich
our artistic heritage. Any branch of fine art that does not receive
something new and artistically valuable will be in danger of becoming
fossilised.
I feel that music and literature are currently being
better served by the august committees that pass quality judgements on
our behalf than are painting and sculpture, where it seems that just
about anything can be described as art.
Simon Parker is
absolutely right to say that Newlyn Art Gallery "has become a monument
to the mundane". Certainly we should be pleased at the £4 million spent
on the building - it is indeed fit for purpose. But unless the
gallery's administrators have the humility to look afresh at the
situation, this fine building will continue to be seen as failing the
art-loving public.
Christopher Hortin
Penzance
THANK you for inviting our views on the Newlyn and Exchange galleries - although words almost fail me.
Perhaps
the best way forward would be for James Green to resign as gallery
director at once, giving back Newlyn Gallery to those for whom it was
built (i.e. the artists of Penwith).
The members of the Newlyn
Society of Artists have been treated disgracefully - all but pushed
right out by a recent succession of pompous bureaucrats, who for some
misguided reason think local artists should be delighted to have third
rate, passe, meaningless exhibitions shoved at us in a patronising way.
Although
James Green had been heard to say there is no local art worth showing,
there are a great many (and very good) local artists - probably more
than ever before. We could easily fill the gallery year round. Newlyn
doesn't actually need a director - a curator could do it. I have been a
practising member of Newlyn Society of Artists for 48 years. I am very
interested in the historical progress of art and I love things moving
on - but it must be good and at Newlyn it should be local. We, the
Newlyn Society of Artists, very much hope we might get our space back.
I for one am actually ashamed of the utter waste of money, time and
space involved in the exhibition now at Newlyn.
Ronni Tunstall-Behrens
Penzance
YOU
invited comments about Newlyn Art gallery. Having been an engineer at
Penlee Quarry, I find it difficult to believe that £4 million has been
spent on this ugly building to house some plastic legs. Where has the
rest of the refit money gone? Why could not some directions be placed
on the front door - now locked - so that people know they have to enter
through some new glass doors. Looking through the visitors book, the
Emperor's New Clothes was a very good description. The whole exhibition
is rubbish.
C Clemence
Penzance
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